“Don’t put this on your blog.”

I’m delighted to contribute to Sara Gonzalez and Darren Modzelewski’s WAC-7 session: Activist Archaeology: Connecting the Academic with the Personalwith the following paper:

“Don’t put this on your blog.” – An online, activist #archaeology

The current prominence of social media enables archaeologists to broadcast their personal and professional lives online. Updating a blog, using twitter, and commenting on message boards in a professional role can give the online public unprecedented access to archaeologists, bringing forth the best aspects of public intellectualism. Yet the practice is not without considerable detractions and many academic and professional archaeologists do not have the time, lack the technical knowledge, or are simply not trained to engage with the public in a legible manner. Adding a personal dimension to an online presence can be risky for a professional career, yet removing yourself from your discussions of archaeology is disingenuous, especially while writing for the public. Additionally, there are often prohibitions regarding public discussion of archaeological work imposed by the government, the excavation staff, or the indigenous stakeholders and community members involved with the site. Given the complications involved, a meaningful, political social media archaeological outreach schema can be difficult to attain. In this paper, I discuss my experiences “living out loud” and doing online archaeological outreach, including ten years of personal, political, archaeological blogging.

This is the original abstract for the paper–I had to cut it substantially to fit in the program. There were several other WAC sessions that I really wanted to participate in, but I will be organizing some other aspects of social media outreach during the conference so I had to limit my commitments to just this one session. Additionally, I really wanted to get to the SHA this year, but I couldn’t schedule them both and still work here in Qatar.

Finally, there is an initiative to present WAC online, using crowdfunding. Please direct all questions regarding this effort to the project creators, as listed on the webpage: